Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot describes the musical acts featured on the second day of the Pitchfork Music Festival held at Union Park in Chicago. Most notable acts included Twin Peaks, St. Vincent, Pusha T, and Neutral Milk Hotel.

Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot describes the musical acts featured on the second day of the Pitchfork Music Festival held at Union Park in Chicago. Most notable acts included Twin Peaks, St. Vincent, Pusha T, and Neutral Milk Hotel.

CaptionVideo: Pitchfork Music Festival: Day 2

Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot reviews day 2 of the Pitchfork Music Festival.

Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot reviews day 2 of the Pitchfork Music Festival.

11:30 a.m.: Idyllic weather and what are likely to be capacity crowds are forecast as the Pitchfork Music Festival opens its ninth year in Union Park on Friday.

Hundred Waters, an experimental pop-rock band from Florida, will be the first of 43 bands and artists to occupy one of three stages spread across the park, with Beck capping the evening as headliner. Among the most anticipated sets Friday are expected from Giorgio Moroder, the 74-year-old Italian-born disco architect who was in semi-retirement until he got a call from Daft Punk to appear on the French duo's latest album. Another rare stateside appearance will be made by Neneh Cherry, the Swedish singer who hit the charts in the late '80s with "Buffalo Stance."

Some tickets remain for Friday's music, but Saturday and Sunday are sold out. More than 55,000 people are expected to attend the festival once Kendrick Lamar closes it down Sunday night. (GK)

3:45 p.m.: Hundred Waters' Nicole Miglis is such a tease. "This is where we start playing Death Grips covers, right?" the singer says with a slight smile. The Florida band is galaxies removed from Death Grips' agit-rap, so it would've been fun to see Miglis and company give it a go. Instead they stick to their own material, which did indeed approximate the texture and out-of-body experience of being submerged in a hundred waters, with reverberating vocals and back-to-the-womb electronic ambiance. Miglis' upper-register tone ethereal, but one-dimensional. She added flute for a chamber pop change of pace, and the quartet flirted with dissonance as it wrapped up, as if to finally make good on its Death Grips quest. (GK)

4:27 p.m.: As Factory Floor churns away with rapid-fire drumming underneath a menacing yet danceable grid of percolating electro beats and splashes of noises, I couldn't help but think that if the late, great Jim Nash were still alive, he would've wanted to sign them to his Wax Trax labe as the latest iteration of industrial disco (GK).

4:31 p.m.: Factory Floor makes music for industrial dance parties held in meat lockers. Stripped down, cold and dreary, the London trio could've been potential stars on Chicago's iconic Wax Trax label back in 1986. Ironically, the band members--and a majority of the audience bobbing to their gristly beats--weren't even born then. Grinding can-opener effects, herky-jerk loops and unintelligible spoken-sung vocals add to the dread and din. Too bad the performance occurs during the daylight; the throbbing fare and vampiric moodiness is ideal for nighttime. After about 20 minutes, repetition sets in, yet the group knows its arty influences and channels them well. The live drumming and appearance of a Fender guitar don't hurt either, despite the sense it could all be executed on a laptop. Aptly, the band departs without a word to the crowd. (BG)

4:45 p.m.: Reinvent or die. Neneh Cherry is no nostalgia act. The vibrant electro-rap artist of the late '80s who broke through to the top of the U.S. charts with "Buffalo Stance" is starting over in many ways. Cherry finally plays the hit at the end of her set, but not before pulling it down the rabbit hole and recasting it as a hypnotic near-ballad. Otherwise, she focuses on fresh material with her two-piece band, Rocket No. 9., in what is, amazingly, her first U.S. appearance since 1992. The singer dances in her gym shoes and shakes her ringleted hair as the band mashes together electronic drone, pop melodies, and agile, jazz-influenced beats. Cherry has matured significantly as a singer, and her flexible voice suits the smudged, genre-jumping arrangements. "It's a lot grimier than I expected," says longtime Chicago techno DJ Tom Pazen as he watches the set. "She's keeping up with the times." And how. The singer rails againnst complacency. "I am not satisfied," she growls. "I want more, more, more." She sounds like an artist just beginning her career instead of re-entering it at middle age. (GK)

5:25 p.m.: Where is the dynamic sound system and Druid robes of drone metal masters SUNNO))) when you need them? London producer Bobby Krlic chases a similarly haunted, doom-ambient aesthetic in the Haxan Cloak but longs for the former band's dynamics and distinctiveness. Mallet drum strikes, the emergence of what resembles a horde of chirping crickets, field-recording fragments and the occasional low-end wave interrupts what's otherwise a slow, dull film score for a low-budget horror flick. The intended eerie feel might work when experienced via headphones in a blacked-out environment, but in the sunlight, the shadowy atmospherics fail to terrorize or scare. At its worst, they seem a parody and bore, an invite to plunge into a bubble bath surrounded by skull candles. (BG)

6 p.m.: When Sharon Van Etten first appeared at Pitchfork a few years ago, she looked pretty lonely up there -- a waifish troubadour with a guitar and a shy demeanor who joked about feeling even smaller next to her image on a nearby video screen. Buit now, four albums deep into her career, the singer buries that memory in the rubble of a powerhouse set. The churning "Serpents" gives way to the wrenching, cathartic build of "Your Love is Killing Me," with guitars amplifying the dire lyrics about the toxicity of obsessive love. "Every Time the Sun Comes Up" serves as the perfect closer, a folk-rock tune with Spanish and country accents. An impish humor cracks through the surface, as if the singer realizes she's in something so deep there may not be a way out. But somehow, she'll figure it out. (GK)

6:45 p.m.: All that's missing is incense. A few songs wouldn't hurt either. The great outdoors is too big a space for U.K. singer SZA, a k a Solana Rowe, to occupy at the moment. Her skeletal arrangements and vaporous backdrops, snaking bass lines and fog-shrouded chords are better suited for a small, dimly lit room, an intimate space that would allow the nuances in her vocals to shape the moment. Instead, the lack of fully formed songs and sharp hooks keeps SZA moving in and out of focus, her worthy chops not enough to match the sun-dappled mood of a midsummer show. (GK)

6:52 p.m.: Mark Kozelek gives it up for his momma. Seated, and singing without a trace of irony, the Sun Kil Moon leader pays respect to mom in "I Don't Live Without My Mother's Love," the most concise song of his quartet's set. Kozelek's hushed fare primarily crawls by a tortoise pace. Even with backing instrumentation, he's an odd choice to play a larger stage. Puzzlingly, he extinguishes his main advantage--his personal lyrics--by bathing his voice clouds of reverb, inflating its size albeit diminishing the clarity. As a songwriter, he bypasses poetic devices in favor of piercing directness, but here, the outcome is often dry, laborious and introverted. Unless you're already familiar with his words, there's almost no way of understanding what he croons. Brushed percussion and sad lullabies mirror Kozelek's pained, closed-eyes expressions. For him, even changing the finger positioning on a guitar chord looks arduous. Similarly melancholic, his recollections come across as sad entries read from the pages of a journal. Only on "Dogs" does Sun Kil Moon snap out of slumber mode, Kozelek's yells echoing as he recounts past sexual experiences and resultant heartbreak. But even it fails to rouse him from his chair, further contributing to the downer vibe. (BG)

7:08 p.m.: Lines several dozen people deep wait for beverage tickets, indicating that while the afternoon started slow, it is now in full gear. Unfortunately, organizers still haven't devised a way to move these booths away from the vicinity of the Blue Stage and decrease the traffic standstills that clog the only way into (and out) of the fest's smallest stage area. (BG)

7:41 p.m.: The indie-rock equivalent of "Romper Room" unfolds courtesy of Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks. Led by Animal Collective member Dave Portner, the trio bangs on whatever device happens to be near, yelps whenever it feels the urge and stretches its voices to cartoonish Silly Putty extremes. The band's giddy refrains even seem geared to children. "You're something special/You've got to shout loud!" Portner and Co. are an affable crew, but the sloppiness and amateurism become fatiguing, their hyperactive garage rock, faux funk and anything-goes psychedelia circling around the same novelty-song concept. Despite the fun, the forced weirdness and motion-sick arrangements lack coherence and substance. In his desperation to capture and hold everyone's attention, Portner evokes a guy who dresses up in a costume on a street corner, jumps about and advertises a going-out-of-business sale. Consider Slasher Flicks a sideshow, not a side project. (BG)

745 p.m.: Giorgio Moroder plays "This is Your Life" on his laptop as he presses "play" on the disco era hits he crafted with Donna Summer, including "Love to Love You," "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls" and "On the Radio." He also dives into the "Top Gun" soundtrack for his "Take My Breath Away" and Blondie's "Call Me." If anyone deserves a push-button payday, it's probably the genial 74-year-old architect of the first electro-dance era. When his Summer-sung masterpiece "I Feel Love" blasts over the park and ignites a sea of undulating dancers, all feels right with the world for a couple minutes. And then he pulls up his own tribute song, "Giorgio by Moroder," via Daft Punk. He waves his hands like he's leading a slow-motion aerobics class. The victory lap continues. (GK)

8:09 p.m.: A few dozen late-arriving fans stream into the front entrance, likely Beck diehards. Tomorrow, concertgoers would be wise to arrive earlier as today's lines caused many to wait outside longer than in previous years. (BG)

9:25 p.m.: A year ago, Friday Pitchfork headliner Bjork was washed out by a torrential storm. Tonight, different story. Beck compliments the weather gods and comes out in a raucous mood, apparently intent on not bumming anyone out too early in his set with a heavy dose of his recent, melancholy "Morning Phase" album. Instead, "Devil's Haircut" gets things off to a buzzing, feedback-heavy start. In a glorious bit of synergy or serendipity or both, he connects his "Think I'm in Love" with Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," which Giorgio Moroder had just punched up during his set. There's no way to play "I Feel Love" too often, especially in a city park in July. Later, he does a deep dive into the downcast tunes from "Morning Phase" and its likeminded predecessor from a decade ago, "Sea Change." As on album, "Wave" is the set highlight, as gorgeous lament as will be written this year about a slow drowning. (GK)